


Like Ashes in our Mouth

by Rehlia



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Pre-Canon, Sad, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8255599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehlia/pseuds/Rehlia
Summary: The final moments of Asriel (and Chara).





	

They stumble through the corridor and into the throne room on legs that barely support them, the lifeless body nevertheless clutched tightly in their cold paws. 

_Chara..._

Chara does not answer. They haven’t been answering him since the attack, since the gash on the chest of their body took their breath away and ate its way into their insides. The burning sting of it has only increased over the past hour, all the way back up the mountain, back through the barrier, down the corridors and into the throne room. 

Asriel knows that this gash is killing them. 

Just that, not the many bruises the humans inflicted on them, but this single gash: a strike inflicted neither out of justice nor out of revenge for the body of the child they carried, but out of pure black hate, the distaste and loathing directed at something just because it is different and scary.

_Chara!_

It hurts. His - their - body hurts, but more than that he feels the double-ache of hurt and betrayal in his own soul and theirs where they are merged, the combined pain of both of them and the deep, bitter taste of their failure. It hurts that they’re not answering him. 

_Chara… I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

_I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill them._

Silence. 

He can feel the corners of their eyes sting - the body they share reacting solely to his emotions. Or is it? He wants to think it’s them, too, that they’re reacting to his thoughts, his apologies, even if it’s only in a physical sense. He can’t tell if they are though. He thinks of this body as both of them together, but he can’t tell what Chara is thinking or feeling if they don’t feel like sharing. Even though their souls are combined. The only thing they seem to share completely is control of the body. They both have input there and can struggle for it if they disagree.

Asriel thought it was nice, at first, to have Chara so close. Watching them die had been terrible. The blisters and the blood when they vomited - he had been so scared. He didn’t want them to die like that, to be in pain like that. He had thought of his dad, and how this had nearly happened to him, and he had watched his parents faces contort in grief when they recognised the symptoms. They must have known it had been deliberate, even if they never talked to him about that. 

What did they think, to watch Chara die, knowing they had done this on purpose but not knowing why?

Did they think Chara hated them?

So much that Chara was willing to die to get away from them?

The plan had been to return with the other six souls, to surprise them with the barrier broken, everyone free and happy. And then they could have explained and it would all have been okay. But now… now their parents might not even know. They need to know. Asriel drags the feet of the warped body he and Chara reside in forwards, over the grass growing on the floor of the throne room, illuminated by multiple shafts of soft moonlight falling through the holes in the ceiling. The sky so close, and yet so far. 

They could have reached the sky… if only he hadn’t been such a coward. 

_Chara, I’m sorry._

_It’s all my fault._

_I should have been strong, like you…_

Asriel stumbles and their body collapses forwards onto their knees. The left one sinks deeper than the right one. When he looks down, he can see why: That leg is halfway through disintegrating into shimmering dust. 

The sting in his eyes finally becomes overwhelming and he sobs. 

He doesn’t want to die. Not like Chara, for whom death had just been a step to take, nothing particularly scary or upsetting, something they had accepted would happen to them long ago. Asriel had talked them away from thoughts like that so, so often and now it was ironically him who made sure they would die for good. 

The left leg sags further. He can hear the soft, whispering sound of the dust spreading over tiles and earth and grass underneath the sound of his own sobs. 

He’s so scared. 

“Mom! Dad!”

He has to explain - 

He has to try. 

“Mom! Please! Dad! Can anyone hear me?”

The right leg follows the left, partially disintegrating and leaving them unstable. 

Asriel carefully moves their shared body forwards to place Chara’s corpse gently onto the fragrant ground. He leans his weight onto his arms and notices his paws dissolving, shiny dust motes spilling forth and seeping into moonlit ground and grass. His terror grows as he watches their body come undone tortuously slowly, dying but holding itself together by sheer determination, without being able to make use of the latter to really escape their fate. 

He can feel his soul shaking and detaching from the magical construct of the body. 

He can feel his soul dying. 

**It is time.**

_Chara!_

**This is the end.**

_Chara, I -_

He hears a shriek and looks up just in time to see his mother, her paws over her mouth and her eyes wide in horror. His dad is behind her looking just as shocked.

“Asriel…?!”

Asriel opens his mouth to answer, to explain, and he can feel Chara right there with him. 

“ ** _We -_** “

There’s a gritty sensation in their mouth as their snout explodes into a shower of dust, their body finally succumbing after all this time. They can’t see, or hear, or feel anymore, can’t smell or taste, don’t know where up and down is or where their arms and legs are - 

Gone, all gone. 

He feels a wild flare of panic in his soul, a matching cold calm in Chara’s, and a shocked sense of recognition from both of them - 

So this then, this is dying - 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His eyes open to sunshine and the cloying smell of golden flowers.


End file.
